Matt_Simpson comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (857)
I can think of a couple of possibilities that are difficult to discuss (although perhaps not here):
Multiparty electoral democracy has no real utility, confers no legitimacy and doesn't satisfy any primal urge for freedom laying dormant in non-Western peoples. "Democracy" as a concept is mainly used in international politics as a weapon to suppress other political systems through sanctions and military action. When a country becomes "democratic" by holding elections, it's really just signalling its compliance with the West. The current period of liberal democratic triumphalism has created an intellectual Dark Ages of political thought. There are many valid forms of governance that don't involved voting. Moreover, so-called "authoritarianism" has a proven track record for development.
"Free speech" is a luxury of hegemonic powers. Countries that are trying to self-determine their own political development necessarily have to suppress ideas that are backed up by the military and economic might of Western hegemony. Since multiparty elections don't express the innate yearning of every human for freedom but rather compliance with Western power, whenever you see somebody in another culture expressing a desire for elections and other Western political "rights", you should be extremely wary of their motives. They're really signalling their willingness to sell out their own culture for power. They're probably every bit as treacherous as the "authoritarian regime" in that country claims them to be. If you truly believe in the right to self-determination, you should support crackdowns on certain dissidents, since the marketplace for ideas has such a strong bias in favour of the current hegemonic power.
Be careful with that around political scientists. I get the impression that some of them define democracy as everything that is good in the world. If you find something else good, they'll just redefine democracy to include it.
Either my model is wrong, or this story is false.
I've heard of lots of academic research into what is driving economic growth in places like China. They don't tend to just label whatever they've found as "democracy."
This is why I said some. I'm aware that not all or even most political scientists do this. However, my impression is that there are some, and I've had my impressions confirmed talking with people more knowledgeable of the field than I.
(Also, looking into the factors driving growth in China is somewhere in the fuzzy gray area between economics and political science. Even if I were saying that most political scientists committed this error, I could easily attribute your counterexample to the influence to economics. But that's not what I'm saying. But it still seems plausible that economists had an influence there.)